1

c h a p t e r 1

The Indigenous World

When the Spanish stepped onto the American mainland, they encoun-tered a complex cultural tapestry. Some indigenous cultures were thriv-ing, some retained vigorous traditions, and others were in decline, buteach had its own rich and unique features. Some twenty million peopleinhabited the Mesoamerican area, concentrated in large interdependenturban centers with outlying clusters of agricultural settlements.

The cities had differentiated themselves from the countryside in theClassic period, between 200 and 900 a.d. Although the numerous agri-cultural settlements were small, people tended to group themselves intovillages with strong internal social distinctions. The rural areas were de-pendent and subordinate to the city-states, which were inhabited by elitesocial strata. Political, administrative, religious, and artisanal activitieswere concentrated in the cities, and services could be obtained there. Theurban elites had developed the capacity to organize and direct complexlabor relations.

The growing population and the sophisticated social organizationstimulated the development of new technologies, such as improved seedstock and agricultural irrigation in the countryside. The evolution ofurban planning led to new construction technologies and the building ofplumbing infrastructure in the cities. Stone conduits carried water toboth the cities and the fields. In the Mayan area, canals were fed fromcenotes, naturally occurring spring-fed limestone sinkholes. On the largelakes of the Valley of Mexico, fresh water was fed to chinampas, artificialearthen islands like those still seen in Xochimilco, to the south of Mexico

2 C H A P T E R 1

City, that were anchored by live huejote trees and fertilized with lichen,aquatic vegetation, and mud from the lake bed. Elsewhere, water wassupplied to terraced fields carved into mountainsides. Water reserves, in-tended to produce high agricultural yields, were stored in enormousearthenware vessels, in small dammed ponds, and in cenotes. A system ofinternal roads provided transportation within large urban areas. These arestill observable in pre-Hispanic archeological sites. Another road systemlinked together the far-flung urban centers. These innovations and natu-ral resources served the daily needs of villages and of the cities that beganto expand around 200 a.d., a development that stimulated productivitythrough the employment of more intensive and extensive sowing andharvesting methods, and satisfied both cultural and religious needsthrough the widespread exchange of goods.

The use of animal power and of the wheel were unknown to indige-nous society when the Spanish arrived. In their place was a complex or-ganization of labor that spread throughout the villages and cities and pro-duced marked social differentiation. Political organization also becamemore complex as nobles came to govern large areas and developed themeans to dominate rural society. Soon they were able to establish kinshiprelations and form alliances with the nobles of different ethnicities in dis-tant regions.

Wars between nobles’ domains, minor kingdoms, and ruling dynastieswere constant, but complex military institutions did not develop becausethe politico-religious aspects of conflict predominated over the strictlymilitary. Shifting alliances and matrimonial pacts, rather than warfare it-self, were instrumental in the rise and fall of ruling families and capitalcities.

Long-distance trade relations were another fundamental characteris-tic of pre-Hispanic society. Complex religious, political, and family net-works were organized in order to develop and maintain these relations,facilitating a certain degree of population mobility.

The AncestorsArcheological evidence tells us that there were human settlements twentythousand years ago in present-day Mexico and part of Central America.In this sense, the history of Mexico began several millennia ago, if by his-tory we mean the story that began the moment humans were first able totransform their physical environment to sustain and reproduce families,

T H E I N D I G E N O U S W O R LD 3

engage in art and religion, and develop social relations among familylines.

The first population groups spent most of their time and energygathering wild fruits and vegetables and hunting for meat. They orga-nized themselves into bands of twenty to thirty families under the au-thority of a chief, to whom they attributed superior, and perhaps reli-gious, qualities. These bands moved within wide areas, since a familyof five required nearly four-tenths of a square mile in order to maintainand reproduce itself. The bands’ mobility can also be explained by theneed to defend themselves against other humans who entered their ter-ritory. These hunter-gatherers also spent time in the manufacture ofwooden domestic utensils and weapons such as bows, arrows, andblowpipes. Group activities were accompanied by religious rites andceremonial meals.

Archeological finds indicate that human settlements were dynamic andmultiplied over time, presumably due to population growth and the in-creasing size of the bands. It was probably at this “macroband” stage thatthe social and political authority of the chief began to be differentiatedfrom the politico-religious function of magical healers who were respon-sible for the well-being of the group.

About seven thousand years ago, during the fifth millennium b.c., theIndians of Mexico began to cultivate the plants that they had up until thengathered in the wild. These plants formed the basis of the Mesoamericandiet. Most of them, like corn, beans, onions, squash, chilies, avocados, andtomatillos, would by colonial times enrich the human diet worldwide,along with the Andean potato.

Like the conversion to the socially more complex macrobands, theswitch from hunting and gathering to agriculture was gradual. It was nota simple transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. Itwas the outcome of complex processes involving the selection of plantspecies, their genetic mutation, and the ability to remember and predictweather patterns and their implications for the availability of plant andanimal food.

The transition from nomadic to seminomadic life took several millen-nia, from 5000 to 2500 b.c. During this time, members of macrobandsdeveloped the agricultural skills necessary for intermittent farming and,subsequently, the additional sophisticated skills that could support per-manent cultivation and settlement. Hunters still ventured from these set-tlements seasonally in order to bring back meat and products obtained intrade with other bands. The macrobands diversified their activities and

4 C H A P T E R 1

1. George Wells Beadle, The Language of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1967).

eventually became tribes with elaborate social hierarchies, living in vil-lages and building wattle-and-daub structures.

The development of agriculture stimulated important inventions, suchas farming tools and other objects carved from stone, and earthenwarecontainers for the storage and preservation of seeds and produce. It hasbeen said that the Indigenous women of Mexico invented fired clay andtransformed wild corn into domestic varieties. The illustrious botanistGeorge Wells Beadle indicated that in breeding corn from a native speciesof grass called teosintle, the Indigenous people of the region produced thegreatest morphological change in any cultivated plant and extended itsrange over a wider area than any other staple crop.1 Another significantcontribution of the Mesoamerican Indians was the domestication of cot-ton and the production of textiles from its spun fiber, replacing the useof maguey. By 1300 a.d., Mesoamericans were cultivating a variety ofcrops sufficient to provide a balanced diet of vegetable proteins and fattyoils: corn, beans, squash, and avocados.

Over time, the population became primarily sedentary and a commonMesoamerican religion spread, characterized by ceremonial burials andabundant figurines—lucid expressions of the Mesoamerican imaginationand the construction of a symbolic world.

The Birth of MesoamericaAlmost five thousand years ago, between 3000 and 2500 b.c., the culturesliving on the stretch of land between Guatemala and the American South-west began to divide into two cultural areas. Sedentary agriculture be-came well established in the Mesoamerican cultures from southernGuatemala to northern San Luis Potosí, while hunting and gathering per-sisted in what we call the Arid American cultures, which were locatedfrom Tamaulipas, Mexico, above the twenty-first parallel north to theCalifornias, Utah, Colorado, and Texas.

The cultural differences among the peoples of these large areas did notcreate conflict among them. On the contrary, goods, knowledge, and cul-tural practices flowed across their extensive and permeable frontiers, asthey do across the political boundaries today. Ethnic and cultural recom-

T H E I N D I G E N O U S W O R LD 5

2. Further explanation is found in Alfredo López Austin and Leonardo López Luján,Mexico’s Indigenous Past (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), pp. 15–21.

bination produced new multiethnic and multicultural communities. Thispermeability of the cultural boundary was due in part to the fact that itwas never fixed but rather fluctuated in accordance with climatic cycles.In dry times, the people of the border region took up nomadism, whilein temperate and humid times, they settled down and practiced agricul-ture.

Arid America was an ecological mosaic. Deserts alternated with fertileplains in areas contiguous to Mesoamerica. Its people traveled long dis-tances. For example, hunters of the North American plains and fishermenof the Pacific Northwest moved throughout the Californias.

Map 1.1 suggests the possibilities for economic and cultural exchangebetween Mesoamerica and Arid America, a characteristic shared by theU.S.–Mexican border today. Responding to the demographic pressureproduced by their own expansion, about 2000 b.c. sedentary agricultur-alists began to extend the leading edge of Mesoamerican culture to thenorthern states of Mexico and the U.S. states of Arizona, New Mexico,and California. At this time, new settlements sprang up, and pockets ofoasis agriculture prospered along the rivers in valleys and on plains in thesouthwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.2

In the twenty-seven centuries between 2500 b.c. and 200 a.d.,Mesoamerican villages evolved into complex organizations. Agriculturalvillages began the period as settlements of twenty or so huts, living fromagriculture based on seasonal rains and the silt deposited by rivers. Theyengaged in trade with other villages, but trading was still precarious atthis stage. The existence of a symbolic world was underscored by pro-tective deities. Agricultural and hydroengineering techniques for theconstruction of terraces, dams, and canals spread in the eight hundredyears between 1200 and 400 b.c., what we call the Middle Preclassic pe-riod, making truly permanent and socially differentiated settlements pos-sible. Agricultural cycles were regularized and additional plants were do-mesticated. The combined effect of new domestic plant species, regularharvests, and greater productivity stimulated both local and long-distancetrade, and the acquisition of prestige goods became possible. Economicspecialization and social differentiation appeared, along with political andreligious hierarchies that organized and channeled the population’s ac-tivities and energies. A partial writing system and the initial calendar reg-isters were invented, and the first great ceremonial centers were built. To-

6 C H A P T E R 1

map 1.1. Ancient Mexico and its three cultural superareas. (Source: AlfredoLópez Austin and Leonardo López Luján, El Pasado Indígena [Mexico City:Fideicomiso Historia de las Américas—El Colegio de México—Fondo de Cul-tura Económica, 1996], p. 16.)

gether these developments produced the first pan-Mesoamerican culture,the Olmec.

Map 1.2 illustrates the original areas of Olmec culture in the regionaround Veracruz and Tabasco on the Gulf Coast. Olmec influence sooncrossed the Valley of Mexico, Oaxaca, and Chiapas to reach the Pacific,ranging as far north as the border of Jalisco and as far south as Costa Rica.It was spread by long-distance trade in obsidian, jade, the basalt used for

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8 C H A P T E R 1

monuments, and the iron used for mirrors—all of them new, highly val-ued, and prestigious materials for many peoples.

Olmec art reflects a culture dominated by its religion and its powerfulnobility, most famously through a large number of colossal stone heads.Recent finds indicate the existence of a great many divinities with similarattributes. In Las Limas, Veracruz, for example, a figure that dates from800 to 400 b.c. portrays the accession to the throne of a young man rep-resented as a jaguar in the arms of a noble, indicating his royal status. Fourtotemic divinities representing God the Creator are sculpted on the backand the knees of the jaguar-boy. The direct descendants of the royal linewere obliged to perpetuate the memory of this God the Creator and tofulfill his commitments to the people. This kind of sculpture is a key tounderstanding Olmec iconography.

Olmec beliefs permeated other cultures. Its concept of a hierarchicalsociety and government dominated by an elite group dedicated to a cultof gods and ancestors spread to various Mesoamerican regions, first byconquest and trade, and later through missionary zeal. The hierarchicalconception of political life took particularly strong root in the Zapotecand Mayan civilizations. Without a doubt, the Olmec culture stimulatedsignificant cultural changes, beginning around 1200 b.c., producing therelative cultural homogeneity in Mesoamerica that astonished the firstSpanish invaders.

The Classic Period in MesoamericaBetween 200 b.c. and 900 a.d., various aspects of Mesoamerican civi-lization matured. The population grew as production and regional tradeincreased. Outlying villages were integrated into the hierarchical systemsof large urban centers. This process reached its apogee in the first few cen-turies a.d., most notably in the organization of territories surroundingarchitecturally monumental cities such as Teotihuacán, Monte Albán, andthe Mayan cities of Uxmal, Copán, and Palenque.

Many reasons have been offered for the flowering of these greatMesoamerican cultures—most prominently, that there was an expansionof production sufficient to sustain larger numbers of people within thepolity. We know of no new technologies that were comparable in impactto those of the Preclassic; however, during this period, trade, conquest,and cultural mimesis spread variations of existing technologies over theentire Mesoamerican region.

T H E I N D I G E N O U S W O R LD 9

3. López Austin and López Luján, Mexico’s Indigenous Past; for the Mayan calendar, seepp. 150–53; for central Mexico, pp. 240–41.

Recent studies of Mayan culture have suggested that the great cere-monial cities did not have continuous control over their surroundingareas. It seems that outlying areas would affiliate with whichever city of-fered them the greatest advantages at a given time. Thus urban elites hadto constantly maintain positive relations with secondary settlements, lestvillage-level nobles incite rebellion against the authority of the capital.

The power of the calendar was crucial to political, governmental, cul-tural, and religious domination in every Mesoamerican culture. An un-derstanding of meteorology, and of time and its calendrical expression,along with theocratic control of this knowledge comprised a major tech-nocultural achievement of the extended historical period. Religion andcalendrical calculation were combined in divinatory practices that drovefundamental changes in social and political organization. They gave riseto complex and hierarchical societies based on lineage and territorialrights. Kings were surrounded by nobles, priests, and sorcerers. The no-bles, or pipiltin, were hereditary leaders who ruled over separate com-munities of macehualtin, or commoners. Both cosmic and worldly qual-ities were attributed to those who governed. Priests interpreted thereligious calendar, the oracles, and divination cycles, while kings and no-bles explained the significance of the agricultural calendar, supervised thefunctioning of the community, and administered its territory. Soldiersand merchants, in addition to their primary activities, performed diplo-matic duties in the areas where they traveled. The strategy of sendingmembers of the royal family to live permanently in other kingdoms mayhave begun at this time as a way to guarantee alliances. It was also anadaptation of the rule that royals could marry only other royals.

There were also local particularities during the thousand years of Clas-sical Mesoamerican culture. In terms of the calendar, there were twomajor systems, that of Teotihuacán and that of the Maya. Teotihuacánmaintained a relatively simple system that combined a 365-day religious-agricultural cycle with a 260-day sacred almanac, a divinatory calendar.The Maya, however, calculated the sequences and correspondences oftheir own two calendars much more precisely and elaborately. The twotraditions were also distinguished by what Alfredo López Austin andLeonardo López Luján call “the symbolization of mental representa-tions” in the case of Teotihuacán, and “the symbolization of verbal ex-pressions” in the case of the Maya.3 Put another way, Teotihuacán

10 C H A P T E R 1

ideograms, or figurative symbols, were used to represent ideas, whileMayan logograms represented words, which in turn represented ideas.

The Classic was undoubtedly a period of fundamental and qualitativechange. The impact of its religion and its social, cultural, and political or-ganization lasted until the conquest. Map 1.3 illustrates the diffusion ofClassic cultures in the center of Mexico. Teotihuacán culture was the mostdynamic and was best situated for geographic diffusion, while the MonteAlbán and Gulf Coast cultures were more geographically isolated.

Teotihuacán, in the Valley of Mexico, was a large metropolis of170,000 to 200,000 people living in an area of less than eight squaremiles. It was the largest city in the Americas, powerful by virtue of its con-trol over deposits of obsidian, an enormously valuable commercial com-modity, as well as its ceramic and obsidian manufactures and long-distance trade. The population was fed through high-yield agriculturecarried out on chinampas, artificial islands constructed in swampy areas.

Unlike the Mayan cities, Teotihuacán was multiethnic, divided into eth-nically based residential neighborhoods that preserved individual lan-guages and cultural practices. The presence of multiple ethnicities may ex-plain the city’s ability to spread its influence throughout the territories seenin map 1.3. A series of transportation corridors led to Jalisco, the Gulf andPacific coastal regions, and southeast to Oaxaca and Chiapas. We do notknow if one ethnic group governed the others or if noble succession wasalong family lines. We know only that there was a governing elite.

The city of Monte Albán, in the Oaxaca cultural area, had a longerlife and greater continuity than Teotihuacán. It began to develop in 400b.c. and reached its highest cultural development in 600 a.d. It had an in-tricate and complex culture, with a calendar similar to that of Teotihuacánand a rich and elaborate religious symbolism. The capital city dominatedthe entire Valley of Oaxaca through a well-structured political system, alsoexercising indirect control over Mixtec kingdoms in the nearby mountains.Monte Albán was divided into fifteen large districts based on lineages andoccupational groups. Each district organized its own economic activities.The writing system was linear, pointing to the importance of syntax in thelanguage. Stone inscriptions chronicle the exploits and conquests of MonteAlbán’s nobles and their alliances with other noble families.

Let us consider the features that fostered the movement and expansionso characteristic of Mesoamerican cultures. Map 1.4 illustrates the promi-nence of the Mayan city-states, large urban centers that dominated theirsurrounding territories, and shows their layout in relation to one anotherand the local and regional roads that connected them. However, there

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map 1.4. City-states of the Classic Mayan civilization. (Source: Michael Coe,Dean Snow, and Elizabeth Benson, Atlas of Ancient America, op. cit., p. 126.)

Major Classic centerMinor Classic centerCave site

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T H E I N D I G E N O U S W O R LD 13

were also commercial routes by land and sea that linked the Mayan areawith the center of Mexico. The fact that both of these large cultural areasdeveloped quickly during this period strongly suggests that there wasconstant exchange between them.

Despite certain cultural commonalities with the rest of Mesoamerica,Classical Mayan civilization had its own particularities, developed overthe five hundred years beginning about 400 a.d. Most city-states main-tained links with each other through the intermarriage of royalty, with noone city dominating the others. Even Tikal, the major city of the Peténregion, never imposed its will on the others. This explains how therecame to be some twenty city-states, each with an urban center for its cap-ital and each dominating its own territory, in the Mayan area around thefirst century a.d.

Like people in other indigenous cultural areas, by the first century a.d. theMaya had a high population growth rate. This spurred urban centers suchas Tikal to develop new technologies and to transition from strictly seasonalto full-time, intensive, and diversified agriculture. Likewise, Mesoamericansin the Valley of Mexico began to terrace the land, reclaim marshland, andchannel and store water for agricultural and urban consumption.

The political systems of Classic Mesoamerica grew ever more complex.Not only were royals distinguished from commoners, but there were hi-erarchical relations among different noble families operating according tostrict rules of succession. Priests and warriors were also ranked. Lordswere considered quasi-divine; the legitimacy of their power was totemic,deriving from the relationship between a divinity and a human group viathe sacred link represented by the sovereign.

By the eighth century a.d., the Mayan territory contained a popula-tion of several million. Fifty thousand people lived in Tikal, an area of notmuch more than six square miles. The average noble family controlled anurban center of ten to fifteen thousand people. A king of kings, or chu-lahuau, presided over ahauobo, secondary kings of various ranks who gov-erned in interdependent kingdoms of greater or lesser importance. Everysmaller kingdom and lesser domain had a presence in the confederation,and its authority was represented in a major governing city. The lesserkings, established in a central city, delegated authority within their ownjurisdiction to others of their lineage or to lesser nobles called cahal, butnever to commoners. The unity and cohesion of the kingdoms, of whichthere must have been somewhere between twelve and sixty in the eighthcentury, were maintained by means of a complex web of noble families,all of them socially, economically, and culturally interrelated.

14 C H A P T E R 1

The main transportation route between the plateau and the Mayanlowlands was at first by river and along the coasts in wooden boats. Later,short- and long-distance trade roads were developed. Drought and floodswere managed by means of complex reservoir and canal systems that ranunder the cities, capturing rainwater and water from undergroundsprings. The Maya also learned to utilize the huge limestone sinkholescalled cenotes that collected underground spring water. Cultivated areasalongside rivers and marshes were elevated and heaped with rich swampmud. The Maya grew lichen and raised fish in irrigation ditches runningbetween the raised beds, using the lichen and fish excrement as fertilizers.The extensive organization of labor power implicit in these methods wasrewarded with two or three harvests per year. These agricultural practiceswere so culturally salient that the kings adopted the water lily, typicallyfound alongside the raised beds, as their symbol.

The jurisdictional boundaries between kingdoms were determined bywars fought exclusively in the dry season between January and May. Atother times, people concentrated on agriculture, religious rituals, andother daily tasks. The Mayan calendar organized the cycle of life, whichwas said to last fifty-two years and was essential to the performance of rit-uals; the utilization of space; and strategies for trade, war, and marriage,as well as for the frequent conflicts of succession between ruling families.All things of importance were scheduled at auspicious times as deter-mined by the stars and by omens. The Mesoamerican cultures had a cycli-cal and nonevolutionary rather than linear concept of time, reflectingtheir teleological worldview; that is, they believed that human eventswere divinely predetermined.

Deities were believed to sanctify the ritual spaces in cities and urbancenters and to exalt them with their powers. At the conclusion of a cycleof life, intricate rituals were performed. Stelae were destroyed; housesand huts demolished; plates broken; and lilies, irises, and other flowersburied in natural caves. These rituals invoked the presence of the divini-ties and sanctified the sites where new cities would be built. They were in-tended to stimulate the emergence of a new ruling family, which wouldthen be responsible for further renewal ceremonies and the planning ofthe future city. Similar ceremonies accompanied the spiritual burial of thedeceased ruler. The earth’s surface was perforated in order to renewhuman ties with the underworld. This was believed to enhance thegrandeur of the new noble household. Likewise, ceremonies would beperformed on elevated sites in order to facilitate the transmutation of theking and his shamanic passage across the three levels of the world.

T H E I N D I G E N O U S W O R LD 15

The Decline of the Ancient WorldUnlike previous periods, the Mesoamerican Postclassic, the period of thedecline of the Indigenous cultures, produced an extensive written record.Thus we can date conquests and migrations, identify rulers by name, andeven quantify tributes. The period is further distinguished by the intro-duction of metallurgy based on gold and copper, which seems to have ar-rived from South America about 800 a.d. This significant technologicalevent led to the availability and use of new tools such as the ax, the chisel,the scalpel, the hoe, and the machetelike coa.

For reasons that are not yet clear, the great capital cities of central andsoutheastern Mexico fell or collapsed in the Postclassic period between900 and 1500 a.d. The fate of two cities, one in the Mayan area and theother in the center, exemplify the events of the new period. The Tolteccapital of Tula in central Mexico fell in 1150 to warriors from the north.In the southeast, the Mayan capital of Chichén Itzá fell to the Mexicas in1250. The Mexicas and the warrior groups would dominate large areas ofMesoamerica until the arrival of the Spanish. This long period was char-acterized by increased social and geographic mobility, which explains theappearance of multiethnic power centers, and by political instability, in-tensified trade through expanded trading networks, and reconfigured in-terrelationships of religion, culture, and politics.

An appreciation of Postclassic society and its circumstances is essen-tial to understanding the Indigenous reaction to the Spanish invasion.Cultural change intensified after 1000 a.d, when climatic changes droveseminomadic northern agriculturalists southward to central Mexico.Hunter-gatherers joined this migratory stream along the way. They be-longed to many groups but were known collectively as chichimecas, orbarbarians. As the migrants moved south in successive streams, they acquired much of the complex knowledge and adopted many of thetechnologies and practices that they encountered. They also stimulatedincreased militarism in the societies that they passed through or con-quered.

The wave of northern peoples made a significant impact on politicalorganization. They established new, highly organized power centers andfocused more than ever on the political domination and subjugation ofsurrounding territories, accomplished by the establishment of subordi-nate kingdoms and the exaction of tribute. These new conditions explainthe proliferation of conflict and rivalry leading to war in the Postclassicperiod. Subjugated peoples resisted domination by other ethnicities and